Mennonites in the 19^th century were leery of politics and discouraged their members from participating in political parties, or standing for election. In the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church, there was no hard rule about it; members did get involved in local elections. Berlin businessman Jacob Y Shantz, who joined the fledgling Reforming Mennonite Society/Church in 1874, was briefly elected mayor of Berlin in 1882 (he resigned after 4 days according to Missionary Church accounts, not visible in some standard Kitchener histories).¹ A member might become a township official or a school board member.

In Ontario, no MBiC or EMCC member has gone as far in politics as the licensed preacher Beniah Bowman (1886-1941), who served as a cabinet minister (Lands and Forests) in the United Farmers of Ontario government 1919-1923, and even as a Member of Parliament in Ottawa 1926-1930, one of the earliest Mennonites to so serve. The Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO) names Erhart Regier the first Mennonite MP in Canada from 1953-1962.² The question is whether Beniah Bowman was an MBiC member at the time he served as an MP, 1926-1930, and whether Mennonites consider the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church a Mennonite church at that time. T D Regehr identified another Bowman from Waterloo as a “Mennonite” MP who served in the 19^th century, but he was not a Mennonite member at the time and not in the GAMEO article on “Politics.”³ If Mennonite heritage were enough, David Reesor from Markham would qualify as well.⁴ Usually Everek Storms, our historian and Gospel Banner editor, was happy to mention achievements of MBiC members, but for some reason, he overlooked Beniah.

Beniah Bowman was born March 14 1886 to Dilman S Bowman and Catherine (Baer) Bowman in Waterloo County, the oldest of 8 children (two died very young). Obituaries call the family United Empire Loyalists, which is a bit of a stretch. Beniah’s Bauman ancestors arrived in Waterloo, Upper Canada, from Pennsylvania in 1818. His grandfather, Tobias Bowman, was a Mennonite minister and two great uncles also.⁵ Beniah’s parents were members of Bethany MBiC church in Kitchener.

Preacher. Born in Wilmot Township, (living in “North Waterloo” in the 1891 census, and in Waterloo Township (South) in 1901), Beniah went to public schools in Doon and Hespeler. By the time he was 20, he was licensed with the Canada Conference of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ, and assigned as a helper to George Chambers at the East End Mission which met on Parliament St in Toronto. He had to find his own employment while there. MBiC city missions generally held preaching services 5 days a week and 3 times on Sunday, so he could have had plenty of assignments under George who was himself a fairly young preacher (b 1879). A search of Might’s Toronto City Directories possibly would spot Bowman in the 1907 Directory and show us what his occupation was in 1906, but by 1907 he was off to another assignment in the deeply rural field of Shrigley and Singhampton in Grey County. He stayed there for 18 months under Milton Bricker, who was beginning a long leadership role in the Ontario MBiC. Beniah had started the 3-year Probationer’s Reading Course, which was required for applicants, and he passed five exams in 1907,⁶ but does not appear to have persevered. In the long Conference year of 1907-1908 (18 months), nobody wrote probationers’ exams. In 1909, the conference noted Beniah had passed two more exams, and encouraged him to complete the full 2^nd year course.

A sister of Beniah, Keziah (“Maud”), married Herbert Cochrane from Manitoulin, from whom came Shirley (Cochrane) Baker, a well-known EMCC member of both Bethany and Faith EMCC churches in Kitchener. Shirley Baker kept a family album (Catherine’s), which preserves family information, clippings and photographs, including the illustrations in this article.

Although Bowman was never ordained by the MBiC, he served in various denominational capacities. Had the Church ordained him, he would have been called “Elder,” but the MBiC did not yet use the honorific “Reverend.” By courtesy, outsiders sometimes styled him “Rev Bowman” as in a 1909 wedding article,⁷ and in genealogical records such as “Generations” of Waterloo Region. Here is his Conference Journal record:

March 1906: helper to George A Chambers at the East End Mission in Toronto

March 1907: helper to Milton Bricker on the Shrigley and Singhampton field

September 1908: helper to David Brittain on the Owen Sound, Squire/Kilsyth and Dornoch field

September 1909: Hespeler under Daniel Eby at Hespeler [inferred][Manitoulin was left off the official Journal stationing list. I haven’t yet seen any rectification in the 1910 Journal where you would expect to find it. Marven Bowman implies his parents went to Hespeler right after the wedding which he printed as in 1908 (typo?)],⁸

September 1910: in charge of Hespeler circuit (Hespeler and Blair), with local help

September 1911: status unclear: [Assigned to Aylmer, but then resigned at Conference, and apologized. Name erased from the roll of Conference members] farming at Gore Bay, Manitoulin Island.

1912-1915: local preacher (Manitoulin Island) The 1915 field consisted of Long Bay, Salem [ie Spring Bay], Brittonville and Union Church. Alonzo T Gooding was the pastor most of those years.

1915: helper to John Bolwell on Manitoulin Island field

1916-1920: helper to William (“Billy”) H Yates on Manitoulin Island

You will notice the strong connection with Manitoulin Island, beginning with his marriage to Mary Bedotha Barr at Long Bay, Manitoulin Island, on September 1^st 1909.

The 1908 MBiC Ontario Annual Conference meeting in Berlin (Kitchener after 1916) dealt with the expanding Pentecostal movement at which 8 licensed workers (including George Chambers) resigned and splits occurred in at least 5 congregations.⁹ Beniah stayed with the MBiC, and was assigned to work with David Brittain in the Owen Sound/ Squire and Dornoch field, where one of the splits had taken place.¹⁰ This suggests the Conference stationing committee trusted these men to steady the congregations. Membership diminished over the next few years, however; some rural members migrated to western Canada and some in the town to the emerging Pentecostal community. In Owen Sound, Beniah worked for the Harrison Lumber Co and in 1909 started his own whitewashing business for area farmers.¹¹ An Owen Sound Sun Times report mentioned that Beniah was a popular preacher in the Mennonite church on Manitoulin, but misled its readers (and the Wikipedia article), into supposing its appointment (singular) on the island was “near Little Current,” whereas their preaching points were in the centre and western side of the island. It was in Owen Sound that he met Mary “Minnie” Barr.¹² Their son claimed that Presiding Elder Sam Goudie had brought them together.¹³ They were married in 1909 at her family’s farm,¹⁴ where they lived from 1911, at Long Bay, District of Manitoulin, until Beniah bought their own farm in 1912.¹⁵ Their only child Charles “Marven” Bowman was born in 1913, at the family house in which Mary Barr, his mother, had been born.

It seems Beniah was posted again as a helper, under Daniel Eby this time, at Hespeler in southern Waterloo County, in 1909. Dan Eby and his wife Blanche left for the Mennonite Armenian mission in Turkey in 1910, and during the September 1910 Annual Conference, Bowman was placed in charge of the MBiC congregations of Hespeler and Blair.¹⁶ Marven Bowman only heard about it from others, but he reports the Hespeler congregations did not accept Beniah’s bow-tie fashion, and that he never accepted a church assignment again.¹⁷ I don’t quite believe the bow-tie story, as other MBiC preachers wore them (eg John Bolwell) and many never wore a clerical collar, either. Other issues could be disguised under a complaint about ties.

There were some missteps at the 1911 Annual Conference that embarrassed Beniah. At first he declared himself “unconditional,” meaning he was willing to take any assignment the Conference gave him, which was the standard procedure of the Methodist-style MBiC polity. He was even approved to be ordained. Maybe he was hoping to be assigned to Manitoulin Island? When it was announced he was to go to Aylmer, ON, however, Beniah changed his mind. He resigned from the Aylmer appointment and apologized to the Conference. A reversal like this at Conference time rarely happened. The Conference forgave him but on Manitoulin he was listed as a local preacher from 1911 to 1915. The lack of personnel during the war years and the difficulties of supporting ministers on the Island seems to have encouraged the conference to bend the rules a bit and recognize him as a helper again from 1915 to 1920. I don’t see evidence Beniah took further probationer’s exams after 1909.

In the next blog we will follow Bowman’s political career.

Banner: Manitoulin Island, Credit: Wikipedia.

1Everek R Storms, History of the United Missionary Church (Elkhart, IN: Bethel Publishing, 1958) p 89. Wikipedia lists Shantz as mayor in 1882: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_Kitchener,_Ontario

2Richard D Theissen (2012), GAMEO, “Regier, Erhart, 1916-1976.”

3T D Regehr, Peace, Order and Good Government: Mennonites in Politics in Canada (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC, 2000).

4“David Reesor,” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reesor

5Ezra Eby, A Biographical History of Waterloo Township and other Townships of the County (Berlin, ON: For the Author, 1895) various places.

6Journal of Canada Conference Proceedings, 1907, p 31. Information about Beniah Bowman’s stationing and others are from the annual Conference Journals.

7“Nuptials,” The [Manitoulin West] Recorder, Thursday September 9 1909; quoted in Region of Waterloo “Generations.” “Generations” erroneously dates the Bowmans’ marriage registry elsewhere as 1907.

8Marven Bowman, “Preface,” p 1, in “Memoirs of Charles Lloyd “Marven” Bowman,” (Gore Bay, ON: By the author, 2000).

9Told in greater detail in my biography of Sam Goudie, Hidden in Plain Sight: Sam Goudie and the Ontario Mennonite Brethren in Christ (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications/ McMaster Divinity College Press, 2024), ch 3-6.

10David Brittain served the MBiC as an evangelist 1909-1912, then became a pastor in Toronto under the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

11Bowman, “Preface,” p 1. Copy in Box 6041 MCHT. Whitewashing work: “Minister is Good Preacher: Hon. Beniah Bowman Assists Mennonite Minister at Owen Sound,” Owen Sound Sun Times (November 21 (192[0]), Shirley Baker Collection, Box 6041 MCHT.

12“The New Minister of Lands and Forests,” Owen Sound Sun Times, (19[20]), quoted in Through the Years, Vol VI, No 11, August 1989, p 26. The online text is slightly different from the contemporary clipping in the Shirley Baker Collection, Box 6041 MCHT.

13Bowman, p 7. I wish Marven supplied more details!

14“Nuptials,” The [Manitoulin West] Recorder, (Thursday September 9 1909).

15Bowman, p 3.

16The New Mennonite Church organized the congregation at Blair in the early 1850s; the MBiC in Hespeler in 1895.

17Bowman, “Preface,” p 2.